It now seems certain that the ruling party in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) who fought their way to freedom through the appalling Apartheid era, will split. Those members who disagree with the the policies, ethics and behaviour of the ANC leader, Jacob Zuma, and those of his supporters, are setting up a new party under the (apparent) leadership of former ANC chairman and defence minister, Mosiuoa Lekota. Aside from the obvious questions of who and how many would join this new party came the additional issue of what it would be called.
It now seems that the proverbial cat has vacated the proverbial bag following an appearance by Mr Lekota at Orange Farm yesterday:
Lekota’s supporters wore white and yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the former ANC chairperson’s face and the words “South African National Congress”.
I think it shows some wonderful imagination. I feel though, the intricacies may be beyond many people’s vision, so please excuse me if I attempt to explain to those that don’t get it.
To recap, Mosiuoa Lekota was a high-ranking member of a political party called the African National Congress, or ANC for short. What has occurred over the past few weeks in South Africa has led (or rather will lead, allegedly) to the forming a breakaway faction from the ANC. In choosing a name for their new entity, what Mr Lekota and his allies have done is taken the name of their previous party, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and added the word “South” in front of it, thus seemingly choosing their new party’s name to be the South African National Congress.
Do you see? It’s simply genius.
I’ll run through it one more time for those at the back. Instead of the African National Congress, they will be called the South African Nation Congress. Because while the continent is called Africa, the country we are in is called South Africa. Hence South African National Congress. Yes?
Words cannot describe the awesome.
One can only hope that their manifesto is a little more distinctive than their party name.
Revenge of the tonsil
I get all sorts of visitors to this blog. There’s a little widget at the bottom of my sidebar which tells me (and/or you) which nationalities are reading me. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Saffas and Brits top the tables right now.
What my little widget doesn’t tell me is which parts of the human lymphatic system are reading the site. And yet evidently, my son’s tonsils have been logging on of late. Upon reading my Ops and Balls post, they immediately went into action in order to prevent any sort of family fun this weekend with, I suspect, the final aim of avoiding their extraction on Monday.
Thus, on Thursday evening, we rushed the boy into the handily local Constantiaberg Medi-Clinic with a temperature of stupid degrees Centigrade (that’s ridiculous degrees Fahrenheit) and were informed by the doctor there that he (the boy, not the doctor) had the biggest tonsils that he (the doctor, not the boy) had ever seen in a two year old. Of course, somewhat ironically, you can’t do a tonsillectomy on a patient who has tonsillitis and so it’s a monster dose of anti-inflammatories and equally large amounts of cefuroxime (second generation cephalosporins rock my world) in a concerted effort to rid the kid of his infection before Monday.
And – touch wood – it seems to be working so far.
Looking out of the window at my garden, I note that either I have extremely good eyesight or I didn’t actually even manage to get on the plane to Fancourt. Due to business commitments, my wife is there though and she’s taken baby K-pu (the smaller of our little angels) with her. Fortunately, K-pu was packed as cabin luggage, since SAA didn’t feel it was necessary to take the passengers hold baggage to George with them*. My wife still plans to attend the Fancourt Ball this evening, despite the fact that her dress (or “gown”?) is still somewhere en route via the N2. At least it’s a bit closer than my tuxedo, which is in a cupboard upstairs.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing the photos of what should be a memorable event. Especially if the dress doesn’t get there in time.
Right – parenting duties call. It seems that I have a Thomas the Tank Engine railway to mend and judging by the increasing desperation in the repeated requests, it’s rapidly becoming an urgent job.
I’ll get my spanner.
* Note to my work colleagues – I told you SAA were kak.